Last Straw

Human Events, an Amer­ican con­ser­vat­ive magazine, recently asked a panel of fif­teen Amer­ican con­ser­vat­ive schol­ars and pub­lic policy push­ers to help com­pile a list of what they call the Ten Most Harm­ful Books of the 19^th and 20^th Cen­tur­ies. I call it this summer’s read­ing list! Or this winter’s for those tun­ing in from the other side of the world. Be sure to check out Ant­o­nio Gramsci’s Prison Note­books, Charles Darwin’s Ori­gin of the Spe­cies, Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed, and Georges Sorel’s Reflec­tions on Viol­ence, all of which only man­age an hon­our­able mention.

In Bolivia, South Amer­ica, an indigenous-led rebel­lion is kick­ing some ass, for­cing Pres­id­ent Car­los Mesa to resign, and demand­ing the nation­al­isa­tion of the country’s energy resources and an over­haul of the con­sti­tu­tion to bring about true rep­res­ent­a­tion of the com­munit­ies that con­sti­tute a major­ity of the coun­try, which is more than two thirds indi­gen­ous. Demo­cracy Now! reports.

Since Amnesty International’s report came out the other week—encouraging other gov­ern­ments to arrest senior U.S. politi­cians if they set foot on their soil—a beau­ti­ful example of what I like to refer to as Star Spangled Blind­fold Syn­drome has rolled forth with an intense pro­pa­ganda (pub­lic rela­tions) effort by the U.S. gov­ern­ment and U.S. cor­por­ate media to edu­cate the world about how great their pris­ons really are, while earn­estly explain­ing that “Amnesty Inter­na­tional has for­feited its cred­ib­il­ity.” Haven’t heard of these guys before but they’ve just pub­lished a nice report, propaganda’s war on human rights.

Harp­ers Weekly is a brief sum­mary of the prior week’s news culled from news­pa­pers, peri­od­ic­als, and the Inter­net. Always worth a read.

And here’s the let­ter I wrote to Helen Clark while I was in Iraq, includ­ing her response.